


after midnight

by saltfics



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Henry Needs A Hug, M/M, Other, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26930659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltfics/pseuds/saltfics
Summary: “I know. I know how the story goes. Hundred of years ago, two soulmates from powerful families fell in love with each other. The world wouldn’t allow them. Their respective families kept them apart—and, and to talk to each other they kept writing letters. And when they couldn’t send the letters anymore, they put them on their skin. They carved them with blood and ink, until the other could see them on their own skin. It was said that this first act of sacrifice, defiance—this, this longing was what changed the way soulmates bonded, allowed them to talk to each other like this. You know this, right?”“Yeah. I mean, it’s a little too Santa-Claus-y for me, but then again I can write my grocery list on my hand and let some random person I’ve never met know how much coffee I consume in a month, so what do I know, right?” He teases, a little nervously. “But didn’t they die?”____Everyone knows soulmates can communicate by writing on their skin, as well as they know that they're all explicitly forbidden from doing so. When Henry's research into stories shows him more than he bargained for, he might just need to find someone worth fighting against everything he's been told.
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 29
Kudos: 66





	after midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HMS_Chill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMS_Chill/gifts).



> This was supposed to be uploaded as a one shot but I was too late to finish it so I'll split it into parts ^^;
> 
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HANNAH <3 I know this isn't exactly what you said but you know me. XD

Alex has been staring at him for a month now.

Not continuously, of course, that would be weird and impossible and a lot more creepy than it already is. But for the past month, the cute blond guy has been coming in twice or thrice a week and Alex has had the pleasure of always getting him in his shifts. So his eyes might stray a little from the job from time to time to sneak glances at his most beautiful patron, always squinting at his laptop screen or digging his nose deep into a tome of a book far too large to be carried around in coffee shops.

Alex is prepared today. Tuesday, 5 p.m. It’s Mystery Blond’s usual arrival time and he’s determined to actually talk to him. At least to find out his name. Or, even better, his phone number.

But as customer after customer steps in and out of the shop with still no sign of the one he’s looking for, his attention drifts towards the door with increasing frequency.

“You seem _very_ distracted,” Liam laughs, whacking him playfully on the back of his head with the cloth he uses to wipe the counters. “Your mystery man stood you up?”

“He always comes at 5! Sharp! It’s 5.30, what if something happened to him?” Alex whines, as he caps an order and hands it to the waiting customer, who is looking at him, brows raised all the way up to his hairline. “Have a nice day!” Maybe he shouldn’t announce that he stalks his patrons that way.

“Something like… he ran out of money to buy coffee three times a week?”

Alex groans. “I’ll buy it for him. I—” He pauses, feeling an itch in the inside of his palm. Dread climbs up his back, numbing the back of his neck as he turns his hand upwards, opening his palm one finger at a time.

“Alex?”

_+1 202 555 0117_

He slams his hand down on the counter and breathes a sigh of relief. A new customer walks in, so Alex smiles, trying to mask the fear that still makes his legs shake, to ignore Liam’s concerned gaze next to him. “Morning, ma’am. What can I do for you?” It’s good her order is simple because he’s only half-listening to her and if her request was more than a line long she would _not_ get what she wanted.

“Alex?” Liam asks again. “Was it—?”

He hums, the sound too high-pitched with stress.

“But—”

“Don’t worry. The dumbass was just making sure they didn’t forget a phone number.” He squats down to get the cold brew bottles from the mini-fridge under the counter.

Liam exhales, closing his eyes for a few seconds. “Oh, okay. Good. Not _your_ phone number, I hope.”

Alex huffs. “Nope. But it was the right area code.” He squints at the five different bottles, trying to remember what the fuck the color-coding is and wondering once again who on earth did their boss expect to admire their bottles that he didn’t want to put labels on them so it wouldn’t ‘ruin the aesthetic.’ And yeah, maybe the old pharmacy-style bottles that look like what Coca-Cola was originally bottled in (meaning they looked like they could make you shoot fire out of your hands—probably green one, to fit the Disney villain aesthetic and everything) is gorgeous to look at and it does fit with their whole vintage, steampunk mash-up, with renaissance fair details they had going on, but the theme alone won’t save this damn coffee house if Alex keeps fucking up his orders because no one labels anything.

“Green one,” Liam whispers.

 _Bless._ “Thank—” Alex pauses again, feeling that itch on his wrist again. He lifts up his palm.

_Sorry._

In a few seconds, it’s gone, rubbed out of existence. Fucking idiot.

“You okay?” Liam asks, peering down at him.

Alex gets up, bottle in hand and focuses on the coffee order to let go of his annoyance—and to avoid being fired. He doesn’t reply until he bids the customer goodbye. “I’m peachy. I just don’t like being used as a drawing board.”

“Well, in their defense—”

“They don’t _have_ a defense,” he hisses, quiet enough to be heard only by those intended. “They’re the ones who didn’t want to—”

“ _Alex._ _”_ Liam’s voice is low and heavy with the beginnings of his own anger. “You couldn’t have anyway. You know it’s not allowed.”

He sneaks a peek at his palm, just in time to see the number smudging and disappearing like it was washed off. “I know,” he sighs, leaning back against the counter. “You and Spencer never tried…?”

“To see if we’re soulmates?” Liam scoffs. “No, of course not. We’d have to break up if we were. Why would we try to find out?” He places himself next to Alex, bumping their shoulders together. “What does it matter anyway? I don’t love him less because he might not be the one ‘destined’ to be with me. Besides, a lot of people get platonic soulmates.”

Alex clenches his fists around the edge of the counter, his stomach twisting in sympathy. It’s sadder, he thinks, for the one with platonic soulmates never to meet. As a person with a hard time keeping friends, knowing there’s a person that supposedly the universe knows is meant to be by his side… It sucks.

Then again, that couldn’t be _his_ soulmate. No, _his_ soulmate didn’t want him. Friendly or otherwise. Which made sense under the circumstances. But he didn’t want Alex long before it could have made sense to him.

“Look, the thing is—”

Before he can continue that thought, Liam nudges at him, nodding towards the door. A man walks in disheveled, soaked to the bone, his arms full of books that are wearing his coat in his place. His golden hair is dripping and curling at the edges, and his cheeks and nose have gone bright red from the cold.

Alex grins at him. “You’re late,” he says as the man approaches.

He blinks at him, a hesitant smile tugging on his lips. “I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

“Well, you’ve been coming here once every two days for weeks now,” Alex shrugs, leaning over the counter with a lazy smile on his face. “I was starting to worry I offended you or something last time you were here.”

“Does that mean I have to spend all my money on tri-weekly coffee in order to spare your feelings?”

“Yup, that’s actually what you need to do. I’m very sensitive, you know.” Liam snorts next to him and Alex shoots him a look over his shoulder. “ _So_ ,” he continues, a little too pointedly, turning his attention back to the man. “What can I get you? You’re going to make us widen our selection of tea soon.”

“Actually, I think I might need some coffee this time.”

“Wow, you must be in big trouble today.” The man sighs, nodding in pain but there’s amusement in his eyes and it makes Alex’s smile stick stubbornly to his face. “What kind?”

“Surprise me.”

He heads over to his usual table in the back, the one by the window, and next to the only power outlet they have. People don’t really come here to study; it’s too loud, too busy. This guy shows up every two days and does exactly that. Alex wants to know why. And again, name, phone number, etc.

He’s already buried deep in his research by the time Alex gets his coffee to him, two books open and a laptop precariously balanced on the third, with an additional notebook on his lap. He pauses just enough to thank him with a grateful smile before turning back to his work, and Alex thinks that maybe he should leave him be until he notices how pale he still is, his frame trembling slightly.

“Hey, we have some blankets in the back from when we keep tables outside in the spring. Do you want me to get you one? It’ll probably be dusty but it works.”

That gets his attention. The man looks up at him, his eyes wide with surprise, and _fuck_ , they’re so beautiful, the kind of blue people write poems about. “You don’t have to go out of your way.”

“Well, if you freeze to death we’ll lose like twenty percent of our income, so.”

He chuckles, a warm sound Alex hopes he can hear more often. “We can’t have that then. Thank you, Alex.” The red dusting on his cheeks intensifies at Alex’s raised eyebrow, and he taps on the spot above his heart twice, where on Alex’s own chest, his name-tag is pinned.

“That’s really unfair, you know.”

“Hey, I’ve given you my credit card about a dozen times now, you could have taken a look.”

“Maybe I just wanted you to offer.”

“Isn’t that a shame?”

“I can still let you freeze,” he warns but he goes to the back of the store, anyway, ignoring Liam’s amused look on his way there. He returns with a thin couch blanket, dusty as advertised. The man takes it with another grateful smile Alex will never tire of seeing, however, and says only:

“Henry.”

Alex grins. “Nice to meet you, Henry.”

Henry comes again that week. And the next one. They don’t speak that much at first. Henry is always so occupied with his work (and Alex is technically supposed to be working) that he doesn’t have the heart to interrupt him. But he learns that he’s working on his Master’s thesis in an English Literature program, that he moved there from England to get a change of scenery and, if Alex inferred correctly because he didn’t outright say it, of people, especially family. In return, Alex tells him that he’s finished a degree in Political Sciences but is thinking of trying for law school instead, and how he’s taking the semester off just working to get some extra money on the side, though the coffee shop doesn’t pay too well for that. (Henry overtips him that day, so the next time his coffee is on the house in retaliation).

It’s about two weeks later that Henry overstays his welcome, and manages to become completely oblivious to the fact that the shop has emptied and Alex has started cleaning for a comical amount of time. Night has fallen outside, and Alex might be a bit obsessed with the way the streetlight from outside the window washes across Henry’s features, painting half of him in bright highlights, drawing a sharp contrast with his shadows. He sent Liam away when most of the customers had left, owing him one for leaving early three days before so he’s left to close up by himself. If Henry ever decides to leave, that is.

Five minutes past his supposed locking time, he decides maybe he needs to say something.

“If we leave now, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“What?” Henry looks up from his book, perhaps for the first time in a solid hour, and Alex can pinpoint the exact moment he realizes what is going on. His mouth parts in surprise, his lips twisting with horror. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. I swear I didn’t notice—”

“Hey, hey, don’t sweat it. If I really wanted you out I would have said something thirty minutes ago when I turned off the espresso machines.”

Henry flinches. “Nevertheless… that was terrible of me. Please, let me help you.”

“Help me how?”

“You need to clean, don’t you?” he says, pushing himself to his feet. “I can help.”

Alex huffs, shaking his head. “No. It’s fine, I only have the floor left. I can do it. Go home.”

“Please,” Henry insists. “Do it for me, I’ll feel so much better.”

“Counterproposal: You let me do my fucking job but in exchange, you tell me what you’re writing about with so much interest that you didn’t notice me vacuuming.”

“You _vacuumed_?”

“Nah, I’m just fucking with you. So do we have a deal?”

Though Henry agrees, he refuses to talk even when Alex starts cleaning in earnest. He squirms in his seat whenever Alex shoots him a look, shifts his gaze from his laptop to Alex, and vice versa, but never utters a word.

“You do understand that you’ll have to present it in front of people eventually, right?” Alex points out, pushing the mop under his feet and poking him with it.

Henry pulls his feet up to help him, wrapping his arms around his legs and Alex bites down a grin. Six feet of boy all packed up on that little chair. Dork. “I’d much rather you let me clean.”

“I’m not sure your professor will give you that alternative.”

He cringes, his mouth twisting like he tasted something bad. “I can talk to _him_ about it… Alex, I really can’t.”

“You _cannot_ be that shy.”

“It’s not that! I’m not supposed to be talking about it, I’m not allowed!”

Alex scoffs. “Why the hell not? Unless it’s fucking illegal, I’m pretty sure you can just…” He trails off when he sees the look on Henry’s face, the way he withdrew at the words. Alex’s eyes widen. “ _Is_ it?”

“Alex—”

“You’re an _English_ Major,” he hisses, abandoning the mop to grab a seat next to him, keeping his voice quiet. “What on earth could you be doing? Unless you lied to me about that.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“Then what?”

Henry hesitates, so Alex comes closer to him, his eyes shifting between him and the computer screen. With a deep sigh, Henry turns the screen towards him.

It takes a moment for his brain to connect with what he’s reading. Each word makes sense by itself but not as a whole, not until the implications of the sentence in front of him crash down upon it to give it shape. Alex freezes, his eyes shot wide. His lips part to speak but all he can do is stammer nonsensical vowels, missing a reasonable thought to voice. In the end, all he asks is ‘ _why_ ’.

“What- what do you mean?”

Alex straightens up from where he’s leaning towards the computer screen. Then leans forward again, narrows his eyes at the words. He shakes his head and takes a step back. “Explain to me what I’m looking at.”

Henry clears his throat, turning his eyes towards the screen, or his lap, anywhere but towards Alex. “I’m doing an in-depth search and analysis of literary stories that mention the existence and the dynamics of soulbonds and soulmates, dated older than the presumed emerging of the writing abilities, which is said to have started with the revolution two hundred years ago.”

Alex nods. Yup. That’s what he thought. Fucking shit. “Okay,” he says, still nodding. “Okay. _Presumed_?”

That gets Henry going, and finally, he shifts his attention back to him. His blue eyes brighten the longer he’s speaking, his voice rising with vigor, pouring everything he has into his words. “I know. I know how the story goes. Hundred of years ago, two soulmates from powerful families fell in love with each other. The world wouldn’t allow them. Their respective families kept them apart—and, and to talk to each other they kept writing letters. And when they couldn’t send the letters anymore, they put them on their skin. They carved them with blood and ink until the other could see them on their own skin. It was said that this first act of sacrifice, defiance—this, this _longing_ was what changed the way soulmates bonded, allowed them to talk to each other like this. You know this, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s a little too Santa-Claus-y for me, but then again I can write my grocery list on my hand and let some random person I’ve never met know how much coffee I consume in a month, so what do I know, right?” He teases, a little nervously. “But didn’t they die?”

“Ah, you see, here’s the thing. Every culture has a different version of this story. And depending on where you are, it ends differently.”

“ _What?_ ”

Henry looks down at his lap where he’s fiddling with his hands. This is the part he doesn’t want to tell him. And Alex can understand why. It’s forbidden to talk to your soulmate, illegal to take a pen and write back to them even when signs of someone else’s life show up on your skin to be shared. Doing this much research on soulbonds is… risky, at best.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” Alex says, placing a hand on Henry's knee. “Like, I’m not going to tell on you but I don’t exactly expect you to trust your favorite barista with something like this.”

“But you expect to be my favorite barista?” Henry quirks a smile despite his hesitation.

“On the other hand, I could rat you out right now.”

“Ah, but you’ll lose twenty percent of your income if you do. How will the store recover?”

Alex shrugs, trying hard not to laugh. “Maybe they’ll let you order coffee in prison. Modern problems, modern solutions, et cetera…”

Henry’s face closes off then, flinching into himself, and whatever moment they just had is gone, dragged into something a lot darker. “I had a friend at school. Her soulmate, she—she was from out of the country. And when the messages started showing up, they wouldn’t stop. Because she didn’t _know_ she wasn’t supposed to. Alex, it wasn’t _illegal_ where she was.”

“What are you talking about? That’s not possible.”

“But it is!” Henry insists. He runs a hand through his hair in frustration as he tries to find a way to properly explain this He tilts his computer towards Alex again but he’s scrolling through the paper too fast for him to grasp anything other than Henry’s words and his own immense confusion. “Every culture had a version of this story. And for some, it does not end in tragedy. I think—I think it’s only the places that have outlawed it that ruined the ending.”

Alex’s head is spinning. His eyes catch on the pen balancing on the edge of the table, and for the first time in years, he wonders what it would be like to write something on his skin and have someone write back. There’s something intimate in the act of feeling the brush press down on his skin, the short wave of emotion that always travels through with it. “What happened to your friend?” he asks, though the pain that ripples across Henry’s expression answers him before he does.

“I… I don’t know. She stopped showing up one day. They couldn’t find her. I-I never forgot about it. They never—And her soulmate—She didn’t know… she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to. Can you imagine getting someone hurt like that?”

Alex swallows hard. His eyes flicker to his wrist as if an _i told you so_ is suddenly going to show up from his soulmate but all he gets is smooth skin and the barest memory of harsh words that once hurt him so. _Go away_.

“Wait, Henry, back up. How do you know all this shit? Where did you find the alternate versions? I can’t imagine they’re readily available.”

It’s the wrong question to ask, for Henry pales. He looks from the computer to Alex, then down on his lap, and back on the computer again. Hee pushes the screen down.

Alex can see what’s coming but he’s still too late to take his hand before he can move away.

“I’m-I’m sorry. I need to-I should go.” Henry scrambles to get up, grabbing his stuff in a flurry of movement and panic. His laptop slips from his grip for a short moment that shaves off five years of Alex’s life before he readjusts his hold and he half-shoves it inside his backpack that he swings over his shoulders. “Thank you-thank you for staying late. And for taking an interest but I’ve really overstayed-”

“Hey, come on, you don’t have to leave. You don’t have to answer me, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, no.” He shakes his head, looking away. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry. Just—” He lifts his eyes to meet his gaze, and where Alex expected fear, there’s only sadness. “Don’t speak of this to anyone, okay? I shouldn’t have told you.”

Alex tries for a smile. “I’m not going to tell on you. You don’t need to be scared of me. I think…” He pauses, frowning as he searches for the right word, then for the confidence to say them. “I think it’s really brave for you to do that. If not a little dumb,” he laughs in hopes Henry will join him.

But Henry doesn’t laugh. “No, I don’t car—well I _do_ care about that too, but you shouldn’t speak of this to anyone because... it might get you in trouble, Alex. Please don’t get in trouble because of me.”

“ _Henry—_ ”

“Goodbye.”

Henry walks out the door before Alex can reply, and the heaviness of his farewell continues to echo in his ears for every day he doesn’t show up again.

**Author's Note:**

> *rubs temples* what a mess.
> 
> Be back soon with the rest of it, hopefully! Find me on tumblr @ saltfics.


End file.
